A quick note before we start the show, I just want to offer my hearty congratulations to

our former guest, Mayan Biallik, who is recently named one of the new hosts of the TV Game

Show, Jeopardy. You can find her episode along with a separate episode featuring Jeopardy

Champion Ken Jennings in our archive. Now, on with the show.

Financial advisors charge their clients more than $1 trillion in fees each year.

That's trillion with a T. But my guest today, Harold Pollock says,

everything you need to know to manage your own money fits on an index card.

Can it really be the case that a trillion dollar industry is adding essentially no value?

Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

Harold Pollock is the last person you would expect to be leading the charge against the

wealth management industry. A soft spoken public policy professor, his research is about

healthcare and crime, not finance. He's just a regular guy who through a series of unlikely

events has become the spokesman for taking back control of your own portfolio. Deciding

not to hire a money manager or to fire the one you already have might turn out to be the single

most important financial decision you ever make. Let's see whether Harold can convince you

that it's a good idea.

So do you still have the lazy boy recliner that launched you on your path to being a personal

finance guru? I do. It turned out to be a good investment. It was extremely expensive,

but it's still in our house doing its thing. Okay, so what does that share have to do with anything?

I basically never paid any attention to personal finance at all until I was age 40.

Let me stop you, Harold, because you're a public policy PhD. You're a professor at the University

of Chicago. How did you get to the age of 40 without understanding how to manage your own money?

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